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What Happened to All the Money Pledged to Fight Ebola? (Humanosphere)

The crux of the problem is eerily similar to that of Haiti. Even more money was pledged after the massive earthquake six years ago leveled entire towns and left more than 200,000 people dead. More than $9 billion poured into the country in the aftermath, but it is impossible to know where and how that money was spent.

Vijaya Ramachandran of the think tank the Center for Global Development tried to track all the spending, but did not get very far. The United States spent $3 billion alone, but did not come close to fulfilling its promises to release all of its spending data. For its part, the U.S. government pledged to publish data in the format set by the International Aid Transparency Initiative in late 2012. That promise has yet to yield significant data releases from Haiti, nor changes with regards to how new humanitarian spending is shared.

“When I mentioned to a colleague in CGD’s Europe office (where I am currently based), that I was writing about the earthquake in Haiti, she asked, ‘Everyone’s forgotten about that, right?’” Ramachandran wrote on her blog last year.